And so the call went out from Mr. Sarrantonio and from me, and the stories began to come back to us. Writers rose to the challenge. We learned to expect only the unexpected.
“…and then what happened?”
The real magic of this little invocation is that it has inspired hundreds of millions of words, has made people who never imagined themselves as storytellers into tale-tellers who could have given Scheherazade or Dunsany’s Joseph Jorkens a run for their money or their whiskey or their lives. We turn the page, and the adventure begins.
There is something waiting for you. So turn the page.
Neil Gaiman
December 2009
BLOOD
Roddy DoyleHE GREW UP IN DRACULA’S CITY. He’d walked past Bram Stoker’s house every day on his way to school. But it had meant nothing to him. He’d never felt a thing, not the hand of a ghost or a shiver, not a lick on his neck as he passed. In fact, he was nearly eighteen, in his last year at school, before he’d even noticed the plaque beside the door. He’d never read the book, and probably never would. He’d fallen asleep during Coppola’s Dracula. One minute his wife was screaming, grabbing his knee; the next, she was grabbing the same knee, trying to wake him up. The cinema lights were on and she was furious.
— How can you do that?
— What?
— Sleep during a film like that.
— I always fall asleep when the film’s shite.
— We’re supposed to be out on a date.
— That’s a different point, he said.-For that, I apologise. How did it end, anyway?
— Oh, fuck off, she said, affectionately-that was possible in Dublin.
So the whole thing, the whole Dracula business, meant absolutely nothing to him.
Nevertheless, he wanted to drink blood.
Badly.